Misfit Flash to Be Serious $50 Competition for Fitness Trackers

The Misfit, a new fitness tracker announced Tuesday by Flash, will cost only $50 when it goes on sale in October, and give other trackers and smartwatches – including the Fitbit, Nike Fuelband, and Apple Watch – some serious competition.

Made of plastic, the wristwatch-style tracker can track "how many steps you’ve taken, and how far you’ve walked, as well as how long and how well you slept," according to The Wall Street Journal. Last but not least, its round face can tell you the time using an array of 12 LEDs.

The Misfit is Flash's second activity monitor, and looks similar to its clip-on Shine model, which was introduced last year for $100. The new price point for the Misfit shows the company's commitment to cornering the cheaper end of the market, providing those uninterested in higher-level features seen on smart watches — like text-messaging — with a no-brainer choice.

The Misfit runs on standard watch batteries, and works in conjunction with a smartphone app of the same name, and that app is available for iOS and Android.

GigaOm reported that "Misfit is focused on activity tracking . . . and continues to emphasize sleep tracking, which is hard to do with wearable devices that need to be recharged every night."

Furthermore, the tracker uses a unique user interface, which CEO Sonny Vu calls the "glanceable UI." With it, users must press the whole face of the watch like a button to make it light up. The configurations of the lights then indicate how active the user has been that day.

Customers will have their choice of red, white, black, pink, lime green, light blue and teal Misfits as pre-orders being this week.

The Misfit, a new fitness tracker announced Tuesday by Flash, will cost only $50 when it goes on sale in October, and give other trackers and smartwatches — including the Fitbit, Nike Fuelband, and Apple Watch — some serious competition.